


The Glittering Earth and the Sky

by Gileonnen



Series: The Hand That Wields the Sword [5]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Drunken Musings on the Dark Ages, Exes as Friends, Gen, Implied D/S relationship, Intimate Friendships, Lee Abara's Dreams of Rabbit Farming, Teasing and Banter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-23
Updated: 2020-01-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:08:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22368466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gileonnen/pseuds/Gileonnen
Summary: Kalith and Lee spend a cold evening on a ridge overlooking the Last City, telling stories of the City's past and reflecting on their own.
Relationships: Implied Guardian/Guardian, Implied Guardian/Spider
Series: The Hand That Wields the Sword [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1351438
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19





	The Glittering Earth and the Sky

Lee sets his battered old Wanderwing down on a ridge overlooking the Last City, high enough that the night breeze nips at Kalith's throat. "Cold?" Lee asks. He holds up the edge of his cloak, and Kalith nestles under his arm.

From up here, the City is a bowl specked with starlight. Local transport carriers nose between skyscrapers with their wing lights winking; the streets gleam like rivers of molten gold. High overhead, the cosmos stretches on forever. "I never get tired of this view," Kalith says softly. "You really feel ... I don't know how to say it. The weight of the City, I suppose. How it's caught in the web of the universe."

Lee nods. His gaze is far away, fixed on neither the stars nor the City but on a place somewhere between. "Used to be a Fallen gun emplacement on this ridge, back in Twilight Gap," he says. "Good sightlines. Hard for us to swarm their position. Think they dropped Shaxx on it, in the end."

A long time ago, Kalith would've teased him for trading poetry for tactics. The years have taught him to listen for what Lee isn't saying: _I stand up here, and I see how near we were to losing everything._ Instead, Kalith fishes in his bag for their takeout and hands Lee a wrapped banh mi sandwich. "Were you there?"

"Twilight Gap? No. I rose a little after that--helped put the City back together. Vanguard had me running patrols near the Cosmodrome for about a dozen years before SIVA." Lee takes a big bite, then makes a face and picks out a stem of cilantro from his sandwich. "You?"

Kalith just laughs and leans back against the hull of the Wanderwing. "No. I rose only a couple of months before we met."

"No kidding--you never told me that."

"Thought you'd tease me for being a baby."

"Well, _now_ I'm going to." Lee squeezes Kalith's shoulder, then frees his hand to hold his sandwich together. "Eat up, kiddo. Gotta grow up big and strong."

"Fuck you," Kalith says through a mouthful of banh mi.

"Hey, you know I'm up for it."

"Mm. The Spider probably wouldn't like that." It isn't a _no_ , and even as he says it, Kalith can hear how very much it isn't a _no._

Lee chuckles, looking at him sidelong. "You still call your boyfriend 'the Spider'? That's a little fucked up."

Kalith rolls his eyes and lets Lee's cloak fall. He heaves himself up onto the wing of the ship with a touch of Light, then scoots back until he can rest his shoulders against the cockpit. "He likes it. I like it. It's none of your business what we call each other."

"Sorry," says Lee. He doesn't sound particularly sorry. His eyes are bright in the starlight, shining and crinkled with mirth. "Want me to come up there with you, or want to be mad at me a little longer?"

"Come up," Kalith says immediately. "Sulking is cold, and you have the alcohol."

"That's one way to get warm." Lee leaps up, and his feet catch on nothingness once--twice--before he comes to rest bird-light at Kalith's side. The old Wanderwing doesn't so much as rock at his weight. When he crawls over to the cockpit, Kalith curls up against his side.

"What about you?" Kalith asks. "Are you seeing anyone?"

Lee shakes his head and uncorks their bottle of soju. "Nah--no time for it. Always something better to do. Or more urgent, I guess. Vanguard needs boots on the ground on Nessus; there's an evil triangle on the moon; someone's fucked up time on Mercury. One way or the other, I don't get out much these days." He closes his eyes and takes a long swig, then offers Kalith the bottle.

Kalith closes his hand on the neck of the bottle. Where his fingertip touches Lee's, a spark of Arc energy leaps the gap and makes him hiss. "We should go dancing sometime," he says. "I don't have a secret agenda; I'm not trying to play matchmaker. I just miss going dancing with you."

Lee snorts. "Think the Spider will mind?"

"If he minds, he'll find a way to let me know." The soju burns on Kalith's tongue, at the back of his throat; it leaves a trail of sweetness in its wake. He hands the bottle back with his gaze still trained on the City, and Lee's hand is right where he expects it to be.

He isn't sure how long they sit like this, trading sips of liquor while the wind sings through the pines far below. Lee is warm against his side, and the liquor feels like a knot of sunlight in his belly. The Earth turns beneath him until the fixed stars seem to drift in lazy orbits.

"Hey, Kalith."

Kalith tilts back the bottle and finds it empty. His limbs are heavy, and his head spins when he tries to raise it, so he just leans back against the hull and feels the Earth move. "Hm?"

"You ever think about the Dark Ages?"

"Sometimes. Why?"

Lee lets his head fall back. The starlight picks out every line and hollow in his angular face. "Just wondering what we'd have done back then. If we'd risen early instead of late."

Kalith closes his eyes. He tries to imagine the Dark Ages without the patina of history--a living era, not some bloody myth of smoke and guns and overgrowth. Images vie and tangle in his mind: Felwinter's Peak streaked with graffiti, the howls of wolves, towns blasted to craters to sate a warlord's bloodlust. Not-yet-Guardians rising and dying and rising again as they crawled toward anywhere with food. "I would have wanted to do right, I think," he says at last. "But I don't think I could've found it on my own. When I rose, I needed Pelagia to tell me where to go, what to fight for."

"Mm." Lee takes the bottle; when he finds it empty, he chucks it over the ridgeline. Kalith hears it shatter somewhere far down the mountainside. "And back then, she wouldn't have known how to answer. Wasn't much to fight for. Just a whole lot to fight against."

"There were people back then, too. I hope that's what she would've told me: fight for the people who can't defend themselves. Show them the Traveler's Light." Kalith chuckles, mostly to himself, and pillows his head on his hands. "But I probably would've wound up attaching myself to some warlord who seemed marginally less terrible than the others. I don't think I would even have questioned it. I just ... need someone to believe in. Someone who will tell me that what I'm doing is right."

Lee clicks his tongue. "Would've probably just taken one look at all that fuckery and walked straight back into the woods," he says. "Looked for mushrooms. Raised rabbits. Pickled shit for the winter."

"Rabbits?"

"Hey, rabbits are good eating," says Lee, sounding wounded. "Soft fur. Simple diet. Ideal farm animal."

"I just can't figure out how you thought I wouldn't tease you for that."

"I'm drunk, that's how." With a poke to Kalith's ribs, Lee adds, "Anyway, there's worse things than a little teasing."

"There are." _Like not having someone to tease you._ Stretching, Kalith sits up straight. Lee is sprawled out beside him, all long legs and thick cloak and cloudy breath rising skyward. The dark shadows under his eyes are as familiar as Kalith's own.

They'll need to go back down to the City eventually--maybe to their separate places; maybe back to Lee's to snuggle and sleep off the soju. And after that, it will be back to Mercury, to Nessus, to the crags of the Tangled Shore.

But for now, poised between the glittering earth and the sky, Kalith is at peace.


End file.
